This article was published on: 10/11/14 12:00 AM
Meet the Oregon spotted frog.
Found in Bend’s Old Mill District, along the Deschutes River upstream from Bend and around Sunriver, the speckled amphibian in late summer became the first Central Oregon species to garner federal protection in 16 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the spotted frog as threatened on Aug. 28 and plans to finalize the listing this fall. The bull trout, labeled as threatened in 1998, was the last animal in Central Oregon to be listed.
The frogs’ range used to extend from far Northern California to British Columbia, but it has vanished from more than three-quarters of this territory, according to Fish and Wildlife. Surveys in 2011 showed the frogs were down to 12,850 breeding adult frogs in all of Oregon.
The reasons for Fish and Wildlife’s listing vary from the frog’s habitat loss to being the prey of hungry, invasive bullfrogs. While scientists have gathered information on the frogs for years, many mysteries remain.